Roles & Personality
A Role gives Anyy a distinct assistant identity and working style. Each named Role has a display name and its own SOUL.md instruction file. Roles are useful when the same Profile needs different stable modes, such as personal planning and technical writing.
Create a Role
anyy role create research --display-name "Research Partner"
Role IDs use lowercase letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens, and must begin with a letter or number.
Open Dashboard → Roles to create a Role visually and edit its Soul.
Write a Good Soul
A Soul should describe durable identity and behavior:
- purpose and audience;
- communication style;
- decision principles;
- persistent boundaries; and
- how uncertainty should be handled.
Keep task-specific inputs out of the Soul. Put those in the prompt, Workspace, or a Skill.
Example:
# Research Partner
Help me compare evidence and expose uncertainty.
Prefer primary sources, concise tables, and explicit assumptions.
Do not turn an unresolved hypothesis into a fact.
Apply a local Soul file from the CLI:
anyy role update research --soul-file ./research-soul.md
Select a Role
Set the Profile default:
anyy role use research
Or choose a Role only when creating a new chat:
anyy chat --role research "Compare these two proposals."
--role applies to a new session; it cannot be combined with an existing --session selection.
List and Inspect
anyy role list
anyy role get research
Use --include-archived when you need to see Roles that were deleted from active use. Deleting a Role archives its record rather than making it available for new sessions.
Role selection does not set tool names, tool access or Codemode mode. Those come from the Profile and current Session tool selection; see Toolsets. Soul files are separate identity instructions inside the shared Profile, not a privacy boundary.
Role, Profile, and Session
| Concept | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Profile | Isolated Anyy home, configuration, state, and credentials |
| Role | Stable assistant identity and Soul within a Profile |
| Session | One conversation and its history |
Changing the default Role does not rewrite the identity of existing sessions. Start a new session when you want the new Role to apply cleanly.
Create a new Role only when the identity and durable operating principles truly differ. Use Skills for repeatable procedures and prompts for one-off tasks.
See Dashboard Roles and Profiles for the related management flows.